Roles and Time

Team Members: 5

Project Length: 6 weeks

My Roles: Collaborated on all 3 studies and wrote Persona | User Story

Overview

Exploratory study to discover if an airline industry app is needed for passengers to transverse airports.

Challenge

  • The Aviation industry remains a critical part of the global economy by constituting an estimated 7.5% of Global GDP, providing 33 million jobs, and transporting 2.2 billion passengers annually
  • The U.S. Travel Association conducted a study that found frustration with the air travel experience leads to an estimated 41 million canceled trips annually
  • Infrequent air travel can promote feelings of stress, anxiety, and confusion while navigating an airport. Helping air travelers feel more at ease while spending time in airports (long layovers, canceled flights, overnights, etc.) can be beneficial to the aviation industry.

Solution / Results

Findings from our three studies concluded there is a possible need for an airport navigation device, especially for infrequent travelers.
Time constraints and changes to the navigation plan can cause stress and frustration. To help alleviate this we concluded that the most beneficial feature for users would be an airport directory listing to help users locate various points of interest, specifically places to eat.

Approach

All participants were between the ages of 23 and 65. All owned smartphones and laptops.

Observation Study

6 participants
Observations were conducted in several different types of spaces: shopping malls, a sports stadium, a train station and airports.
We organized each observation into individual participant steps placed in chronological order. We then took these steps and created affinity diagrams which we analyzed in order to combine the findings across all six observations.

Interview Study

5 participants
We asked the interviewees questions about their travel habits, feelings while traveling, recent and memorable travel experiences.
We transcribed the interviewee’s responses based on our recordings. We used an inductive approach to code the  responses. We then combined our codes and synthesized our common themes.

Survey Study

53 participants
We asked the participants about their travel habits, attitudes, technology they use while traveling and may be interested in when traveling.
We identified trends that emerged and then exported results an Excel spreadsheet to code the data for statistical analysis. We then imported that data into SPSS and ran the following statistical tests: chi square and ANOVA.
We also placed interviwees on a spectrum based on user goals and needs. The spectrums informed how we segmented potential users; this segmentation is reflected in our personas.

Major Findings

Major findings from our five observations include:

  • Directional Orientation: All participants relied on navigational aids that are part of the environment but did not do so confidently.
  • Time Sensitive Decision Making: Two out of five participants had to make navigation decisions based on their own time constraints.
  • Dealing with Change: Four out of five participants sometimes have to deal with unexpected change in their navigation plan.

Major findings from our five interviews include:

  • The influence of personality and personal experience on airport navigation: The product might be beneficial to both frequent and infrequent flyers for different reasons dealing with anticipation of changes.
  • Relation between navigation and method used: Signage is used first to navigate, which indicates that this could be useful information to include in a device.
  • The influence of an airport environment on navigation: Participants mentioned environmental factors as contributing to positive and negative traveling experiences, digital and non-digital.

Major findings from our survey responses were analyzed with chi-square and ANOVA statistical tests with the following results:

  • Relationship between travel frequency and places of interest searched for when in an airport: The chi-square analysis reveals that there is a significant relationship between travel frequency and searching for airport shops. As well as travel frequency and searching for members’ lounges.
  • Relationship between travel frequency and usage of travel-related apps:  The chi-square analysis reveals that there is a significant relationship between travel frequency and usage of an airline specific app.
  • Relationship between people that travel with others and people who travel alone with places of interest searched for:  The chi-square analysis reveals that there is a significant relationship between travel preference and members’ lounges.

Conclusion and Future Research

Future Research: Overall, we determined that there is a strong enough need for an airport navigation device, but we will need further investigation with interviews and more in-depth questioning in surveys to determine what features would be most important for users.
Lessons Learned / Limitations: Observation studies were not performed in the same environment with similar signage. Some environments may have better signage than others thus not having consistent results across participants.
Also, it is always difficult in survey mailings to know if  respondents answered honestly. Furthermore, we feel our findings are somewhat limited due to the blind survey posting on Facebook and Twitter, which allowed anyone from anywhere to answer the survey questions.